Geo installation review - UX perspective

I got inspired by the review process of @fzimmer on this issue: #11722 (closed) 😄

As a less-technical person and a new joiner to the team, I would like to share my experience of the installation!

Preliminary research

Words from colleagues (anonymous)

It is not easy to install Geo on your machine.

Start installing GDK! I know it's not easy.

It takes some time to set up the right environment!

• Summary: not easy

Preparation

• GDK
• Geo document
• Coffee ☕ and chocolate 🍫
• Blocked calendar to focus on installation

Steps

Step 1. Set up GDK

• Time consumed: 3 hours
• Trouble-shooting: Stack Overflow, Issues on GitLab

Installation went smoothly. I had two errors, but I could easily handle them by searching online.

Step 2. Finding Geo on the UI

• Time consumed: 1+ day
• Trouble-shooting: Asking people, handbook

I had to spent couple of hours to find the Admin area. I've asked some colleagues (not in the Geo team) in person but they also couldn't find the menu.

Thanks to @vsizov, I could find the small icon button on the header.

🤔 However, I did not have a right license to use Geo. I need to search the handbook and finally managed to add the license to the account.

Some points to be discussed are:

• Is it really okay to put the admin area with the icon button?
  • It is a usability issue for the first-time user, and we call it learnability. It was not only me who had a hard time to find the menu!
• Provide the required license(name & link to the license) for using Geo
• New node button is nothing to do with the current page at the moment (no license added yet).

Step 3. Setting up Geo

• Time consumed: 1 day
• Trouble-shooting: Asking people on the channel

I knew already that I need to set up on the terminal from now on. However, I couldn't find the document https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-development-kit/blob/master/doc/howto/geo.md since it has two more depth from the readme.md of the GDK repository.

The document itself was nicely structured, so I could easily follow step by step.

Just small notes while going through the document, I couldn’t find the difference between ‘Geo_node_name’ & ‘node_name_here’.

Also, I was confused at this part. Do I have to replace the key? or do I have to add the key from the primary?

I had some errors regarding the Postgresql (posted on the Slack channel), but it worked well after the re-installation of the gdk. Probably it's because I unintentionally installed the geo-gdk once under the gdk folder and removed it.

If that was the problem, it would be better if I can see some notes or suggestions on the document install geo-gdk parallel to the gdk folder.

Thoughts

In general, it took me more than two business days to install the product. During installation, I had to ask several people to figure out the issues and thanks to that I could successfully have Geo on my computer.

Of course, I am a UX person who is totally different from our target user group. But I would love to explore better option to improve the installation process from now on 🙂

What I liked personally:

• Nice team to ask questions
• Thrilled about learning and exploring a new area
• More straightforward process than expected :D

Things to be improved (high-level):

• Less step & time on the installation
• Consistent flow of the installation
  • It was hard to distinguish between the task should be done on the UI and the terminal. It could be better if we can bring the user from the terminal to the UI and not to go back and forth.
• Read-only mode on the secondary UI
• Update labels with better consistency
• Align with the design system

Action items in mind:

• Get the video on how others installing Geo on their machines
• Find out which action could be done only on the terminal
• Group the process and translate into the user flow diagram
• Set up Geo on the GCP (needs access first)
• Share the experience with the UX team